FOR SENIOR Skills, thrills and

MANAGERS AND Brexit headaches

PROFESSIONALS Whitehall HR chief Rupert
McNeil talks to PSM
Location, relocation,
dislocation
Government hubs:
managing the civil
service’s big office move

@FDA_union
@We_are_keystone
WINTER 2018

Keeping the
lights on
Governing without
politicians in Northern
Ireland
In this issue
Don’t forget you can follow your union on Twitter
@FDA_union @We_are_keystone

Welcome

Craig Ryan, Editor

I remember the tense final
night of talks on the Good
Friday agreement very well
because I was up all night
– ears glued to the radio
– putting the finishing
touches to the first-ever issue of PSM. We
16 24
got over the finishing line just before the
politicians. In the morning we had a brand News4 Features
new magazine, and Northern Ireland had FDA warns MPs – don’t expect the First People Person 16
the prospect of lasting peace for the first impossible on Brexit; HMRC needs 5,000 Civil service Chief People Officer Rupert
time in my lifetime. more staff for Brexit; FDA calls for end to McNeil talks to PSM.
Twenty years later, PSM and the Good attacks on civil servants; NHS managers
Friday agreement are still with us. But as plan more active and engaged union; Keeping the lights on 19
Matt Foster reports on page 19, the skill We speak to Northern Ireland’s top
Fight for fair pay continues after Budget
and dedication of the small band of public officials about governing without
sevants in the Northern Ireland Civil let down; Civil service to track careers of
under-represented staff politicians.
Service are being tested like never before
as the country enters its eleventh month Plus: our round-up of the latest civil Smart moves? 22
without a political executive. We should service starters, movers and leavers. The move to government hubs demands
never forget that democracy isn’t just about skilful management, investment and
the doings of politicians; it also depends Organising  12 training.
on the hard work of thousands of men Alan Bailey on the FDA’s plans to step
and women who keep the machinery of Whitehall’s stress test 24
up its campaign for fair pay for civil
government in good working order – and Jo Clift urges civil service managers to
make sure the lights stay on, no matter how servants.
Plus: Neil Rider explains how FDA Learn pay attention to their mental health –
dark it gets.
masterclasses can boost your skills and and that of their teams.
Published by FDA your career.
Elizabeth House, 39 York Road, London SE1 7NQ Books26
T: 020 7401 5555
www.fda.org.uk | info@fda.org.uk Meet the FDA 12 Yanis Varoufakis on how the EU killed
Introducing Assistant General Secretary Greece to save itself.
Acting Editor – Craig Ryan
Naomi Cooke and Communications Gordon Brown’s enigmatic memoir.
T: 01453 828888 | craig.ryan@fda.org.uk
Officer Matt Foster. Plus: our selection of the season’s best
Staff writers – Tommy Newell, Matt Foster other reads.
T: 020 7401 5588 | psm@fda.org.uk
On your case 12
Design – Chapman Design How the union helped get one member’s Members’ small ads 28
T: 01273 236932 | info@chapmandesign.net retirement plans back on track.
Crossword 29
Advertising – Simon Briant
SDB Marketing Opinion14 Truth to power 30
T: 01273 594455 | simon@sdbmarketing.co.uk
Sue Owen warns the civil service isn’t A service delivery expert from the
Printers – Captiv8 UK Ltd immune to prejudice. Government Digital Service warns that
T: 01892 611500 www.captiv8uk.co.uk Plus: Dave Penman on the failure of Whitehall’s digital transformation is
All articles © Public Service Magazine 2017 or the author. The political leadership on Brexit heading for the rocks.
contents may not be reproduced without permission. Writers’
views are not necessarily those of Public Service Magazine or
the FDA. ISSN 1460-8936

Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 3

 News
Share your news with us at psm@fda.org.uk
Brexit
FDA to MPs: Don’t “expect the
impossible” on Brexit
Ministers must provide “urgent clarity”
on the UK’s post-Brexit immigration
system to avoid placing “unrealistic
expectations” on already-stretched staff,
the FDA has warned MPs.
Appearing before the Home Affairs
Select Committee in November, FDA
National Officer Helen Kenny – who
represents senior staff in the Home Office
– highlighted significant pressures in a
department which has cut its headcount
by more than 1,000 since 2010.
Pointing to the FDA’s latest working
hours survey, carried out earlier in 2017,
Kenny said almost three-quarters of the
union’s Home Office members believed
working excessive hours is already a
problem in their organisation.
She added: “Over 60% say that they’ve
worked while on sick or annual leave,
Up to 5,000 extra HMRC staff needed
to cope with Brexit
The government has admitted that HM
Revenue and Customs (HMRC) will need to
hire between 3,000 and 5,000 extra staff
to be “ready for all scenarios” following
Britain’s exit from the European Union.
The FDA has been calling on the
government to invest in HMRC’s capacity
and capability since the vote to leave the
EU, and General Secretary Dave Penman
welcomed the government’s “long overdue”
move to “finally face up to the realities of
Brexit”.
“As we have been warning since the
referendum result last year, if the civil
service is to deliver the best outcome for
the UK, the government needs to provide it
4 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
”Members’ biggest
concern is not
knowing what
things will look
like the day after
we leave the
European Union”
Helen Kenny
and most feel that that’s not going to
change, that nothing is being done
about the workload. So the issue isn’t
necessarily vacancies. It’s – having cut
the workforce – the amount of additional
pressure on people who have remained.”
A key issue facing Home Office staff in
the months ahead will be the registration
of the three million EU nationals
currently in Britain, Kenny said. But
while work on the registration system
with the capacity and capability to deliver,”
Penman said. But he warned that “the
devil will be in the detail” and called for the
government to provide more clarity on how
the new jobs would be funded.
In addition to announcing plans for
new Brexit staff, HMRC Permanent
Secretary Jon Thompson appeared before
the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on
20 November and revealed that he is still
waiting to be awarded funding to upgrade
the Customs Handling of Import and Export
Freight (CHIEF) system to ensure the UK is
prepared to handle the expected increase
in customs declarations after Brexit.
In a strong chaallenge to the Treasury,
was already well underway, she said it
could not be finalised until the outcome
of Brexit negotiations is clear.
Kenny told the Committee that there
was a “frustration” among FDA members
in the Home Office at the length of time
taken to fill vacancies, and warned that
their “biggest concern” is “not knowing
what things will look like the day after we
leave the European Union”.
“The closer we get to that date the
more likely it is that Home Office will
not have the time or the resources or
the ability to put the relevant processes
in place,” she added. “There’s a real
concern that the Government will
expect the impossible. That unrealistic
expectation of how quickly a system can
be put in place is causing real concern
for our members.”
Thompson told the committee: “Just to be
really clear, it is going to happen and I am
going to spend the money, whether I get
the funding or not.”

Impartiality
“Ill-informed” civil service
attacks must stop, says FDA
The FDA has stepped up its work to
defend the impartiality of the civil service
by taking its case directly to Parliament.
The FDA’s General Secretary, Dave
Penman, and its President, Gareth Hills,
gave evidence in November to the Public
Administration and Constitutional
Affairs Committee (PACAC), which is
part-way through an inquiry into the
effectiveness of the civil service.
Penman told the committee that the
civil service had “responded incredibly”
following a decade of cuts to its
resources and – despite real pressure
in some departments – was “delivering
efficiencies whilst maintaining public
services”.
But he warned of “a clear disconnect
between what is expected from the civil
service and the resources it is given”, a
situation he said had only got worse as
the UK prepares to leave the European
Union.
Both the General Secretary and
President hit back at recent negative
briefings against senior civil servants,
with Penman saying that the Brexit vote
posed a “real danger” for the civil service
as politicians and commentators looked
to “point the finger” at officials.
He added: “It’s been one of the most
polarising political issues that we
have faced as a country and we are
increasingly seeing finger-pointing –
we’re seeing civil servants singled out
by either politicians, those around
politicians, or commentators that are
looking to make accusations.
“I think the nature of that sort of debate
has been rather unedifying, both in the
run-up to the referendum and since
then.”
Hills – who is a long-serving tax
inspector at HM Revenue and Customs
as well as President of the FDA – said
it was vital for politicians and media
commentators to remember that FDA
members were not simply nameless
officials, but real people working hard to
deliver public services.
“I’m somebody who, for 30 years, has
gone into work every day to strive to
deliver for the nation,” he said.
“I describe myself often as a builder,
although I’m a tax inspector, because
the money that I bring in builds schools,
hospitals, nurseries, libraries and
playgrounds. And every time I see the
work of not just HMRC members but
FDA members criticised in the press, I
know that it hurts those people as the
individuals they are rather than faceless
bureaucrats.”
“Brexit poses a real danger for
the civil service, as politicians
and commentators look to
point the finger at officials... I
think the nature of that debate
has been rather unedifying”
Dave Penman
News
FDA in the
media
November
FDA Assistant General Secretary Naomi
Cooke criticised Chancellor Phillip
Hammond’s “short-sighted” decision
not to relieve long-running pressure on
public sector pay in the Autumn Budget.
This view was echoed by ARC President
Vicky Johnson who accused Hammond
of hypocrisy for taking credit for extra
tax revenue collected by HMRC while
failing to “properly acknowledge” those
who made it possible.
Hammond pledges to fund nursing pay
rise – but quiet on rest of public sector
CIVIL SERVICE WORLD
Budget 2017: Union fumes at lack of
recognition for HMRC staff
CIVIL SERVICE WORLD
Unions attack Budget for lack of action
on pay cap
PUBLIC FINANCE
FDA General Secretary Dave Penman
accused Boris Johnson of seeking to
“shift the blame” for the diplomatic
crisis over jailed British-Iranian national
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, after allies
of the Foreign Secretary told the press
that officials in his department may be
responsible.
His comments were followed up by a
live interview on Sky News, which was
subsequently covered by the Sky News
website and LBC Radio.
Boris Johnson under renewed fire over
Iran comments
SKY NEWS
Following revelations of abuse and
harassment in Westminster, Penman
warned in a blog for Huffington Post
that the current system for addressing
staff complaints in Parliament is not fit
for purpose.
Until The Imbalance Between MPs
And Staff In Westminster Is Tackled,
Parliament Will Remain A 19th Century
Workplace
HUFFINGTON POST
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 5
 News

Harassment

Survey flags “real concern” over workplace

harassment and bullying
The FDA has urged the civil service to
do “more than just talk about being an
excellent employer”, after a union survey
revealed widespread concerns about how
the civil service deals with allegations of
bullying and harassment at work.
The FDA launched the confidential
survey of members in the wake of
high-profile complaints of harassment
in several industries, including politics
and the media. 45% of respondents to
the FDA survey revealed that they had
personally experienced harassment by a
colleague.
While just under two-thirds of
respondents said they had reported the
incident either formally or informally,
only 19% of those individuals said they
were satisfied with how their report was
handled.
Only one-third of respondents told the
FDA that they felt confident a harassment
complaint against a colleague would be
properly investigated, while 40% said
that they either had a ‘low’ or ‘very low’
level of confidence in the complaints
process.
The survey also sought members’
workplace experiences with people not
employed by their organisation, such
as MPs, ministers, special advisers
and contractors, an area where there is
currently little or no complaints process
for large swathes of the civil service.
One in seven (14%) respondents said
they had been personally harassed
by an individual from outside their
organisation – but 34% said that they
had not reported the incident. Of those
who did, 73% said they were unhappy
with the outcome.
While fewer than one in seven of
those took part in the survey (17%)
said they had been personally accused
of harassment or bullying by a fellow
employee, a majority (58%) of those who
had been told the FDA that they were not
satisfied with the way the accusation was
handled.
Respondents raised particular
concerns over the length of time taken to
investigate complaints, and the lasting
45% of respondents to the FDA survey revealed
that they had personally experienced harassment
by a colleague
Only one-third of
respondents told
the FDA that they One in seven (14%) respondents said
felt confident a they had been personally harassed by an
harassment complaint individual from outside their organisation
against a colleague
– but 34% said that they had not reported
would be properly
investigated the incident. Of those who did, 73% said
they were unhappy with the outcome
reputational damage they could suffer who took the time to fill in our survey.
even when complaints were later shown Some of the issues raised are clearly
to be unfounded. very recent and very raw, whereas others
The FDA also used the survey to gauge occurred many years ago but have left a
confidence in its own support services. lasting impact.
While 60% of respondents expressed “What is abundantly clear is that there
confidence that the FDA would support are real concerns about how bullying and
them if they brought a case to the union’s harassment are addressed, with neither
attention, 11% of those who took part those bringing complaints nor those
reported either a ‘low’ or ‘very low’ level who are accused feeling subject to a fair
of confidence in the union’s support. process. For too long the civil service
Responding to the survey, FDA has responded to many of these issues
Assistant General Secretary Naomi Cooke by moving people around departments.
said: “Firstly, I want to thank all those This has prioritised short-term problem
avoidance over natural justice and long-
term issue resolution.
“The FDA will be working with CSEP,
"Some of the issues raised are departments and others to ensure the
clearly very recent and very civil service does more than just talk
raw, whereas others occurred about being an excellent employer and
many years ago but have left a takes the necessary steps to give its staff
lasting impact" Naomi Cooke real confidence in this objective.”

6 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018


Managers in Partnership
NHS managers plan more
active and engaged union
NHS England Chief Executive Simon
Stevens and former NHS Employers
leader Dean Royles were among the
senior NHS figures to lead discussions
at the first Summit for members of
Managers in Partnership (MiP), the FDA
and Unison joint-venture representing
senior NHS managers.
The new-look conference, held in
London on 31 October, was part of MiP’s
plans for a more active and engaged
union, and gave members the chance
to shape the union’s priorities for the
coming year, explained MiP Chief
Executive Jon Restell.
“We know it’s going to be tough, we
know the economy’s going to get worse,
we know the demands are growing,” he
said. “But we should be doing everything
we can to make those workplaces safe,
positive and productive.”
Speaking three weeks before the
Budget announcement of a conditional
end to the seven-year cap on NHS pay,
Stevens warned ministers against forcing
NHS organisations to fund pay rises out
of existing budgets. “That would be an
own-goal of the first magnitude,” he told
delegates.
Stevens also backed MiP’s call for
an increase in the share of UK national
resources devoted to the NHS, pointing
out that raising healthcare spending to
the same levels as France and Germany
would give the NHS an extra £23bn to
spend.
In a rousing and often funny speech,
Royles, now director of HR at Leeds
Teaching Hospitals, told delegates to
stop being apologetic about their jobs
and make the positive case for NHS
management. “I think there are four
things people want from work and, as
managers and as a trade union, we have
the ability – indeed the duty – to provide
all four: meaning, belonging, growth and
hope,” he said.
The 200 delegates from across the UK
also met in regional sessions to discuss
local NHS developments and plan MiP’s
response, and held a series of workshops
to debate workplace issues such as
equality, partnership working with
employers, staff wellbeing, improving
line management and combatting hostile
attitudes towards NHS managers.
The Summit was followed by a
reception in the House of Commons,
where delegates lobbied MPs and heard
from speakers including health minister
Philip Dunne and Bristol West MP and
MiP member Karyn Smyth.
News
FDA in
the media
Penman’s criticisms of the handling of
sexual abuse complaints were featured
in an exclusive story by Political Editor
Paul Waugh.
‘House Of Cards-style’ Sex Abuse
Can Only Be Stopped By Independent
Complaints System - Civil Service Union
Chief
HUFFINGTON POST
This was followed by an exclusive
article for The Guardian, in which
Penman argued that the resignation of
Priti Patel as well as the ongoing abuse
and harassment claims demonstrate the
failure of politicians to police their own
behaviour.
A pirates’ code governs Westminster.
The solution is independent scrutiny
THE GUARDIAN
October
The FDA accused Boris Johnson of
showing an “astonishing lack of
judgement”, after he allowed a new hard
Brexit think tank to be launched in his
own department.
Boris Johnson accused of breaching
ministerial code over thinktank launch
THE GUARDIAN
Heywood asked to investigate claim
Boris Johnson breached ministerial code
over FCO think tank launch
CIVIL SERVICE WORLD
The FDA warned the new consultation
on the Civil Service Compensation
Scheme represents a “backwards step”
and risks undermining key concessions
secured by unions last year.
Civil Service Compensation Scheme:
new terms propose cut to redundancy
payments
CIVIL SERVICE WORLD
New Civil Service exit pay plans ‘remove
hard-won protections’
PUBLIC SECTOR EXECUTIVE
Cabinet proposes cuts to civil service
redundancy payments
PUBLIC FINANCE
UK government tables deeper
redundancy payment cuts after court
defeat
GLOBAL GOVERNMENT FORUM
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 7
 News
Pay
Fight for fair pay continues
after Budget let down
The FDA has vowed to continue its drive
for a fair and fully-funded pay rise right
across the public sector, after Philip
Hammond’s Budget failed to offer any
substantive action on pay.
As part of its ongoing pay campaign,
the union has launched a dedicated
website – FDAFairPay.co.uk – which
allows members to enter their current
salary and find how they have been
affected by the public sector pay freeze
and subsequent below-inflation pay cap
since 2010.
The site then connects users with their
local elected representative, with the FDA
encouraging its members to write to them
directly to make the case for properly-
resourced pay increases.
Despite speculation that years of public
sector pay restraint would be eased in
the Budget on 22 November, Hammond’s
statement confirmed only that he was
lifting the formal 1% cap on pay rises,
which has been in force since 2011.
But with no additional funding for pay
outside the NHS, the Treasury has made
clear that any increases will have to come
from existing departmental budgets.
Responding to the Budget for the FDA,
Assistant General Secretary Naomi Cooke
welcomed the additional £3bn in funding
to help Whitehall prepare for Brexit, but
she said that the Government’s “lack of
Civil service to track
careers of “under-
represented” staff
The FDA has welcomed the civil service’s
new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy but
warned there is still “much more to do” to
support under-represented staff.
The strategy, published in October,
aims to make the civil service “the UK’s
most inclusive employer” and sets two
key priorities: “to continue to increase
the representation of currently under-
represented groups at all levels across
the Civil Service” and “to build our culture
and reputation as a place that attracts,
8 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
investment in the talent and hard work of
civil servants” was “telling”.
“The civil service needs to be able
to recruit and retain the best people to
deliver the best possible Brexit, so the
complete absence of any statement
on pay for the 98% of civil servants
not covered by Review Bodies beggars
belief,” Cooke added.
“The NHS rightly gets an indication
of funding for negotiated pay reform
at a time of immense pressure, so why
not the same for a civil service facing
unprecedented challenges?”
Her view was echoed by the
Association of Revenue and Customs
(ARC) – which represents senior staff in
HM Revenue and Customs – with ARC
President Vicky Johnson accusing Mr
develops, retains and fully engages all the
diverse talent across our organisation”.
Responding to the strategy, FDA
Equality and Diversity Officer Zohra Francis
commended the “innovative move” to chart
the progress of BAME and disabled civil
servants throughout their careers, and
stressed that “all departments should heed
the plan’s commitment to identifying and
supporting talented staff, regardless of
their background”.
But Francis warned that significant
barriers still exist for under-represented
staff, such as the “divisive performance
management systems which can stifle the
very talent that the public sector should be
nurturing”. The FDA “stands ready to work
Hammond of hypocrisy for praising
the work done by HMRC officials in his
statement while failing to take action on
pay.
“The Chancellor rightly used his
Budget statement to shout about
the extra £160bn in tax revenue that
HM Revenue and Customs staff have
managed to bring in for the nation since
2010 – yet he’s completely missed the
chance to back the people who’ve made
that possible,” she said.
Johnson added: “While ARC welcomes
the Budget’s £155m of investment in
HMRC’s capabilities and its inclusion of a
raft of new measures to tackle avoidance,
the Chancellor cannot simply rely on the
goodwill of public servants to deliver
these plans in the face of ever-greater
pressure on their terms and conditions.”
As well as the FDAFairPay.co.uk site,
the union’s post-Budget pay campaign
continues with the launch of the FDA’s
annual Senior Civil Service (SCS) Pay
Survey.
The anonymous survey will form the
central part of the FDA’s submission to
the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB)
for its 2018-19 pay review, and the union
is urging all SCS members to take part to
help ensure that the voice of senior staff
is heard as ministers consider the future
of civil service pay.
with departments to identify and tackle”
these, she said.
Writing in this issue of PSM (see p14),
Sue Owen, the civil service Diversity and
Inclusion Champion, admits that while the
civil service’s inclusion and fair treatment
scores are at their highest since 2009,
“it would be disingenuous to infer that
the civil service would be immune to any
cognitive dissonance that exists in wider
society”.
As a result, Owen says she is
uncompromising in her determination
to ensure that the civil service “remains
steadfast” in its commitment to inclusion
in order “tackle the pockets of prejudicial
behaviours where they exist”.

Revolving Door
Civil service starters, movers and leavers
David Chrimes, a
member of the FDA’s
Executive Committee
and a Crown Advocate at
the Crown Prosecution
Service, has been
appointed to the Social Security
Advisory Committee (SSAC). The SSAC
is an independent body which advises
the Department for Work and Pensions
on the impact of social security
legislation. Chrimes will serve as the
committee’s workers’ representative,
and will serve for a fixed, five-year
term from February 2018. Philip Jones,
Director of Prince’s Trust Cymru, has
meanwhile been appointed as the
committee’s employers’ representative,
while Centrepoint Chief Executive Seyi
Obakin has been reappointed as the
representative for Black, Asian and
Minority Ethnic Groups.
Jim Harra has been
named as the new
Second Permanent
Secretary at HM Revenue
and Customs. Harra
joined the Inland
Revenue in 1984, and was appointed its
Director of Corporation Tax and VAT in
2009. Since 2016, he has served as both
Director General for Customer Strategy
and Tax Design, and as HMRC’s Tax
Assurance Commissioner. He succeeds
Edward Troup, who is retiring after 13
years at the Treasury and HMRC.
Karen Pierce has
been appointed as
the UK’s Permanent
Representative to the
United Nations, making
her the UK’s first female
UN ambassador. Pierce has previously
held a number of high-profile jobs at
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(FCO), including Director General –
Political, Chief Operating Officer, and
the UK’s Ambassador to Afghanistan.
She succeeds Matthew Rycroft, who is
leaving the UN to take over as the new
Permanent Secretary at the Department
for International Development.
Gary Aitkenhead is to take the
reins as Chief Executive of the Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory,
an executive agency of the Ministry
of Defence, which is run along
commercial lines. Aitkenhead joins
the DSTL from the private sector,
having previously held senior jobs
at Sepura and Motorola Solutions.
He succeeds Acting Chief Executive
David Marsh, who stepped into the
post when previous Chief Executive
Jonathan Lyle left DSTL in September
2017.
Ian Dalton has started work as
the new Chief Executive of NHS
Improvement, the public body which
oversees foundation trusts, NHS
trusts, and private providers offering
NHS-funded care. Dalton previously
served as Chief Executive of Imperial
College Healthcare NHS Trust, and
his career includes stints as Chief
Operating Officer and Deputy CEO at
NHS England, and as Chief Executive
of NHS North Of England.
Ruth McKernan is to step down as
the Chief Executive of Innovate UK, an
executive agency of the Department
for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy. McKernan has led Innovate
UK, which works with industry to
support innovation, since May 2015.
BEIS said it would be launching a
recruitment campaign shortly to
find a successor in time for Innovate
UK’s relaunch as UK Research and
Innovation in April 2018.
Mike Parsons has
moved from the Home
Office to become
Director General of the
Government Property
Unit, the Cabinet Office
team that works with departments
to reduce the cost of the government
estate. Parsons joined the civil
service from local government, and
has served as Director General for
Capabilities and Resources at the
Home Office since 2013. Parsons will
lead the government’s estate strategy,
and his appointment comes ahead
of the expected launch of the new
Government Property Agency in the
new year.
News
My alternative
career
Robert Marshall
Robert Marshall, head of policy
for anti-extremism, hate crime
and counter-terrorism in the
Scottish Government.
Had I not been a civil servant I would
probably have remained in music
professionally. Having trained as a
singer and as a conductor, I spent the
first 15 years of my civil service career
combining both. In 1996, I worked as a
Procurator Fiscal prosecuting
criminals in a busy Glasgow Court by
day, and performed the role of the
defendant in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial
by Jury on the Edinburgh King’s
Theatre stage by night.
I have sung in a number of Cathedral
choirs and founded both the
Edinburgh University Chamber
Orchestra and the Glasgow Chamber
Choir. One highlight has been working
as Chorus Master of the Edinburgh
Royal Choral Union, conducting their
annual New Year Usher Hall Handel
Messiah (see picture).
In this ever-pressured world of work,
a foil is essential – mine has always
been, and remains, music. My current
pet project is working to secure a room
in the Scottish Government offices
with a piano for use by staff to
practise or learn.
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 9
 Organising
Organising across departments throughout the UK

The Budget had

nothing to offer
on pay but that
doesn’t mean the
FDA’s campaign
for a fair deal for
civil servants is
over. Far from it, explains FDA
Organiser Alan Bailey.

The campaign for fair pay in the

civil service continues. Philip
Hammond’s Budget on 22 November
made no commitments to additional
funding for civil service pay, and the
Chancellor actually said very little
on public sector pay other than to
agree to fund a pay rise for NHS staff,
provided a deal can be reached on pay
restructuring with the health service
unions. The Budget might not have
been what many in the public sector
hoped for, but there is still room for
manoeuvre and there remains a strong
sense of solidarity between unions
across the public sector.
Before the Budget announcement,
the FDA was active in making the case
for fair pay in the civil service. We
joined unions from across the public
sector at the TUC rally in October
outside Parliament (pictured right).
Many of you have used our fair pay
calculator which enables you to figure
out how much you are worse off due to
the pay cap, and written to your MPs
to let them know how the pay cap is
affecting you.
We have been raising awareness
of the value of civil servants’ work
through members’ stories. No one
needs to have it explained to them
why a nurse’s job is important, but the
work that civil servants do isn’t as well
known or appreciated – which is why
we need to raise awareness and change
the public dialogue around civil service
pay. We have already promoted the
work of a range of FDA members – from
Campaigning for equal pay
PUBLIC
SERVICES The Association of Revenue and Customs (ARC), the FDA section
NEED representing members in HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), is
pursuing a series of equal pay claims against the department.
FAIR PAY ARC calculates that women in Grades 6 and 7 are being paid up to
£8,000 less than their male colleagues.
Most members in HMRC occupy jobs that have, historically, been male-dominated, such
as tax professionals, accountants, lawyers, statisticians and policy advisers. While more
women have entered these professions over the past decade, this period coincides with
the end of earned pay progression in the department, which has severely curtailed their
opportunities for a pay rise.
As a result, many women are now stuck at the bottom of their pay range with no way
of moving up, while men doing similar work – who had already reached the top end of
their range – enjoy higher pay. ARC believes that this represents indirect discrimination,
and the case is currently before the Employment Appeals Tribunal, with a hearing set for
early 2018.
“It cannot be right that, in 2017, women are still being discriminated against and
undervalued, earning 15% less than their male counterparts and, in some cases, even
managing men who are paid more than them,” said FDA Equality and Diversity Officer
Zohra Francis.
“Women in the public sector face a double whammy of the gender pay gap and the
ongoing squeeze on public sector pay that only serves to prolong the wait for parity,”
she added. Tommy Newell

10 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018


CPS barristers, who help to protect our
communities by prosecuting serious
criminal cases, to the staff in the
National Archives who preserve and
share the most important documents in
Britain’s history.
We need to continue to showcase
stories about the work that you do in
your roles every day. We believe it’s
vital to combat the negative stereotypes
about civil servants by showing to the
public, in easily understood terms,
the vital, difficult and highly skilled
work that our members do every day.
These stories are not about criticising
the government or its policies; they’re
about highlighting the work that you do
and why it matters to the country. The
FDA can make the connection between
your job and the need for you to be paid
fairly for that vital work – you don’t
need to do that yourself! If you would
like to tell your story – about the work
that you do and why it matters to life
in the UK – we would love to hear from
you.
The Budget announcement doesn’t
mean the FDA’s pay campaign is over –
far from it. The focus of the campaign
will now shift to departments.
Promoting member stories will help
us to win wider support at national
level while we apply pressure locally.
Your local branches will be running
campaign activities, but remember
that branches are only as strong as the
active support they have from their
members. Support the campaign and
your local branch by getting involved;
look out for more information on what
your branch is planning on fair pay, or
talk to your local rep.
If you want to share your
story or to get involved with
the pay campaign in your
department please get in
touch with FDA Organiser
Alan Bailey:
alan.bailey@fda.org.uk
Learning
Mastering new
skills
With the new Civil People, Capability and Change at the
Service Department for Communities and
Competency Local Government.
Framework just Christine has had a long and varied
around the career in top government roles, with
corner, Neil Rider lots to say about successful leadership
sets out plans to at organisations as varied as the
build on FDA Learn’s success. Treasury and the Defence Science
and Technology Laboratory. But she
Our members’ demands are changing was keen to hear the experiences of
all the time and, with the Civil members attending the masterclass
Service Competency Framework too – all of whom came from totally
set for a major refresh in 2018, we’re different government departments,
trying to get ahead of the curve with meaning they were able to bring their
a new approach to our FDA Learn own unique insights to the session.
programme. These masterclasses are
FDA Learn has already helped complemented by some one-to-one
hundreds of our members to make real mentoring with senior colleagues,
progress in their careers, as well as a round of
but we can’t stand still. Our masterclasses structured ‘action
That’s why we’ve taken with senior leaders learning sets’, in which
their feedback on board give you the tips, the attendees meet
– looking honestly at experience and regularly to offer each
what’s working well and insight you need other support and
what isn’t – as we shape for the road ahead – guidance. We then
our new learning services from people who’ve make sure that these
for the year ahead. already travelled it sessions are guided
A key part of the new by some light-touch
programme will be more oversight from senior
focused, targeted masterclasses with colleagues, helping both senior staff
senior leaders, an approach we’ve and the people learning to meet their
already tried with great success professional development goals – a
in Scotland with our “Leaders win-win situation.
Developing New Leaders” scheme. Members who have taken part in our
These masterclasses have given our broader, competency-based FDA Learn
members the chance to experience events over the years need not fear: we
mentoring with senior colleagues in will still be teaming up with employers
smaller, more focused classes, giving across the country to run these larger
them the chance to gain valuable tips, classes, where appropriate. But the
experience and insight on the road benefits of the masterclass approach
ahead – from people who’ve already are clear to see: they offer our members
travelled it. a more focused, sharing experience,
But these sessions are not just and allow them the time and attention
about senior leaders handing down to really focus on their career goals.
wisdom from on high. In fact, one of Indeed, some of those who attended
the most valuable aspects of these our recent events in Scotland have
sessions has been the benefit that already gone on to gain a promotion,
members get from the contributions passing on their thanks to FDA Learn
of their fellow attendees from right for the part we played!
across government. One recent
masterclass was, for example, led Neil Rider is head of FDA Learn and
by Christine Hewitt, the Director of Keyskills 
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 11
 Meet the FDA
Two people working for the FDA tell us something about
themselves and what they do for members.

master’s in IT to pave the way for her General Secretary job advertised.
Naomi Cooke future career. She even signed a contract A key factor in the move was Naomi’s
for a graduate training scheme with an IT experience working with FDA’s Dave
Assistant General Secretary company, because she “never thought I’d Penman and Rob O’Neill on the 2010
get the job” with the CWU. renegotiation of the Civil Service
Naomi Cooke When the unexpected call came Compensation Scheme. Naomi says she
started working in through, it was an easy decision to make “liked the way the FDA did things” and
the trade union – regardless of the salary on offer from the way that they were “trying to find
movement straight the IT company – because politics was a deal that worked for the members,
out of university, “much more interesting” than a career as not for any individual self-interest or
initially for the a software engineer, she says. ideological straight jacket”.
Communications After 10 years with the general workers Since taking up her post, Naomi feels
Workers Union union GMB, during which time she also it’s the little, incremental wins that
(CWU) as a completed a graduate diploma in law, keep her motivated and really make a
Research Assistant, Naomi was looking for a new challenge difference to members – whether it’s
before moving to GMB as National when she saw the job of FDA Assistant getting the right result in a personal
Pensions Officer. She joined the FDA as case, or convincing the SSRB to make
Assistant General Secretary in January recommendations as a result of FDA
2013. I liked the way evidence.
According to Naomi, this isn’t how Looking towards the future, Naomi
she thought her career would turn out.
the FDA did is excited to see what opportunities the
Following her bachelor’s degree in things... finding a FDA’s move to its new Borough High
politics and a master’s degree in political deal that worked for Street head office will present.
philosophy, Naomi expected her second members Tommy Newell

Matt Foster which was really great fun,” he recalls.

“But it was all about speed, really, and
sometimes quite scary.”
Communications Officer Feeling ready for a change, Matt
took the job of Deputy Editor at Civil
“I sort-of wanted to Service World – like PoliticsHome, it
be a journalist since I was owned by Dods Group, but the
was about 15,” says culture was “totally different”, he says.
Matt Foster, who “It’s a dif-ferent beat really. It’s not
joined the FDA staff high politics, but I was always really
as Communications interested in the workforce side of it,
Officer last spring. in pay and conditions, recruitment and
“So I got involved retention, and all the stuff that people
with in the have to deal with on the ground every
newspapers at school and college, and I day.”
really enjoyed it. I loved writing, learning After two years, Matt says he
about things and talking to people.” came to a “natural break point” and
After a history degree and an MA in successfully applied to join the FDA as
political journalism at London’s City Communications Officer. “I’d spent the
University, Matt joined the online news last two years talking to the FDA, and
service PoliticsHome as Assistant News been really impressed by them. I felt like
Editor in 2012. “I had a lobby pass and they were grown-ups,” he explains.
did the day-to-day political reporting, As well as contributing regularly to
PSM, Matt and his colleague Tommy
Newell handle the FDA’s relations with
the media and its communications
with members. He also has a big role in
developing the union’s new website, set
to be launched early next year.
Away from the office, Matt recently
took up running, but admits to spending
a lot of time “sitting around – watching
TV and films, talking with friends and
listening to electronic bands no one’s
ever heard of”.
And what are his first impressions on
moving from a media company to a trade
union? “It’s easy to be motivated here.
I’m surrounded by people who know
why they get up in the morning,” he
replies. “The FDA is one of the only voices
sticking up for an impartial civil service…
It’s amazing being part of a team that’s
helping to shout about it when no one
else really is.”
Craig Ryan

12 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018

On your case
A Classic clanger
Paying into a pension scheme should give you peace of mind and
security in retirement – but it’s easy to fall foul of confusing pension
rules if your plans change. Tommy Newell talks to Chris Cadman about
how the union helped to get his retirement plans back on track.
Chris Cadman had worked in the civil
service for over 30 years when he took
voluntary exit from his full-time Grade 6
job in 2016. Throughout his career,
Cadman had paid into the Classic final
salary pension scheme. On leaving, he
chose not to preserve his pension – cur-
rently worth roughly £29,000 a year
with a lump sum of £87,000 – and to
draw it once he reached the age of 60.
The following year, Cadman returned
to work after accepting a short-term
contract with the Home Office – at a
lower grade – to provide seasonal cover.
Cadman opted to join the Alpha
pension scheme, as it was the only
option he was offered as a new starter.
Conscious of the preserved benefits he
had accrued throughout his career, he
asked his new employer what he
thought was a simple question: “Will the
preserved benefits that I’ve built up at a
much higher grade continue, or will they
be affected by my new lower salary?”
Unfortunately, nobody at the Home
Office could answer that question.
Cadman then contacted MyCSP, but they
answered a completely different
question, telling him that the Home
Office had put him in the wrong pension
scheme: he shouldn’t be in Alpha, he
should have gone back into Classic.
It was at this point that Cadman started
to panic. The advice he had been given
by MyCSP meant that his previously
accrued pension could be slashed by over
£25,000 a year.
“The Classic pension is based on the
best of your last three years” Cadman
explained “and if I’m still in Classic then
the best of my last three years, if I do this
seasonal work for the next two or three
years, would give me a pension of a
couple of thousand a year – if I’m lucky.”
This was the “nightmare scenario”,
Cadman says, as it would have left him
“absolutely skint” and thrown all his
future plans out of the window. At this
point he came to the FDA for help.
On Your Case gives FDA and Keystone members the chance to share
their experiences of problems at work and talk about how the union
can help to resolve them. If you’d like to share your story, drop us a line
at psm@fda.org.uk. If requested, anonymity is guaranteed.
Cadman had been a member of the FDA
while in full-time employment and
became an associate member when he
took his voluntary exit. The FDA quickly
took this case directly to the Cabinet
Office, hoping for a clear answer. Their
initial response suggested that Cadman
should be in the Premium scheme – not
Classic or Alpha.
Despite Cadman’s situation becoming
increasingly common for civil servants,
there didn’t appear to be clear guidelines
for what should happen in these
circumstances. The FDA went back to the
Cabinet Office to ask them to
double-check the advice they had given,
and provide Cadman with full written
confirmation.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, the
Cabinet Office finally confirmed that,
actually, Cadman should be in Nuvos –
completing the full sweep of all four civil
service pension schemes. The final
confirmation secured by the FDA meant
that Cadman’s preserved benefits from
Classic were just that – preserved – and
any new service would be under Nuvos
and would not affect his entitlements
under the Classic scheme.
After a number of “sleepless nights”,
Cadman finally had it in black and white
from the Cabinet Office and could
confidently return to work knowing his
retirement plans were safe.
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 13
 Opinion
Got an opinion? Let’s hear it at psm@fda.org.uk
We’re not
immune from
prejudice – yet
The civil service has
made great strides
towards being an
inclusive employer,
but too many
colleagues still find
their sexual
orientation or gender identity a
barrier to success at work,
writes Sue Owen.
In 2015, the civil service commissioned
Ben Summerskill to write a report, Don’t
Ask, Don’t Tell, on ways the civil service
could be more inclusive. His report,
which included real-life case studies,
made clear that the civil service was
ahead of the curve on Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex
(LGB&TI) inclusion some years ago,
but had since moved towards a median
position. We needed to take action to
ensure that our policies and working
14 Public Service Magazine Autumn 2017
environment remained relevant to
diverse staff and inclusive to diverse
LGB&TI communities. In the spirit of
transparency, the civil service published
the report. We needed and wanted to
make a positive change. I wanted to play
a key role in making that change happen.
It was the opportunity to make a
difference in tackling negative workplace
behaviours that attracted me to the role
of LGB&TI champion. The opportunity to
ensure that someone’s sexual orientation
or gender identity was not a barrier to
being recognised for their skills, talent,
and expertise, and to demonstrate the
kind of leadership and behaviours that
enable people to choose to come out at
work in the knowledge they will continue
to be treated with respect and valued as
colleagues.
As LGB&TI Champion, I proactively
There may be a
societal shift
towards more liberal
values but prejudice
persists in many
areas
promote work that makes the civil
service more LGB&TI inclusive. The civil
service is making better use of data to
monitor the extent that learning and
career opportunities are accessible to
LGB&TI colleagues. We are confident
that the selection processes for activities
such as accelerated career development
schemes are fair and deliver transparent
outcomes for all our staff, including our
LGB employees. For example, our Future
Leaders Scheme – a programme that
identifies colleagues with the potential
to progress to roles within the Senior
Civil Service – has LGB representation
that is consistent with the proportion of
staff at that grade. We have also taken
steps to embed inclusive practices within
recruitment.
The civil service encourages
participation in LGB&TI staff networks,
including the Civil Service Rainbow
Alliance and the cross-government
network for transgender, intersex and
non-binary staff known as ‘a:gender’.
These highly effective networks regularly
contribute to strategic activities and
raise the profile of LGB&TI role models.
For example, the staff networks and
a number of other stakeholders have
played an integral role in trialling gender

identity questions within the Civil Service
People Survey and coordinating the civil
service presence at PRIDE.
We may have made some progress
but we cannot be complacent. The 2017
British Social Attitudes Survey says that
there may be a ‘societal shift’ towards
more liberal attitudes but prejudice
persists in many areas. For example, the
vast majority of people answering their
survey (82%) describe themselves as “not
prejudiced at all” to transgender people.
However, less than half of respondents
say suitably qualified transgender people
should definitely be employed as police
officers or primary school teachers (43%
and 41% respectively).
The civil service values are clear; we
continue to work towards ensuring our
policies are even more inclusive but it
would be disingenuous to infer that the
civil service would be immune to any
cognitive dissonance that exists in wider
society, particularly when the majority of
our colleagues work in customer-facing
roles. We must therefore remain steadfast
in our commitment to LGB&TI inclusion
so that we can tackle the pockets of
prejudicial behaviours where they exist.
In October 2017, we published a Civil
Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
It comes at a point when our inclusion
and fair treatment scores have increased
and are the highest that they have ever
been since we began measuring them in
2009. The strategy focuses on our twin
priorities of increasing representation
– becoming an organisation where the
diversity of the UK communities we serve
is reflected at every level – and creating a
working environment where people feel
respected and valued for their talent and
contributions. These twin priorities are
supported by focusing on driving greater
accountability and assurance.
As Permanent Secretary Civil Service
Diversity Champions, my colleagues and
I are unapologetically ambitious for the
civil service. Any achievements will be a
result of collective action at every level.
We have made a number of strategic
commitments that will accelerate our
progress even further and achieve our
ambition of becoming the most inclusive
UK employer.
Sue Owen is Permanent Secretary at the
Department of Culture, Media and Sport,
and civil service LGB&TI Champion.
Picking up the
pieces
The failure of
Britain’s political
leadership over
Brexit has left civil
servants exposed
to insults and
scapegoating, says
FDA General Secretary Dave
Penman.
As the realities of trying to deliver
Brexit start to bite, laying bare the
incoherent and contradictory positions
of both government and opposition,
the scapegoating of the civil service
has begun in earnest. Perhaps it was
always going to be thus, but it’s no less
disappointing for its predictability.
Through the inevitable cycle of crisis
then breakthrough, played out too often
to be a Machiavellian strategy, each
episode was either the fault of wily Sir
Humphreys manipulating the poor Jim
Hackers, or a failure of the civil service to
abandon its impartiality and deliver us
from the evils of Brexit.
Disentangling the UK from 40 years
of EU membership was always going to
be a Herculean task for the civil service.
To stand any chance, it needed greater
resources, new areas of capability and,
Opinion
crucially, clear political leadership. While
the FDA has been banging on about the
resources and capability gaps, the truth
is the greatest risk to a successful Brexit
is the failure of political leadership. A
minority government weakened by a
series of self-inflicted wounds – that
cannot agree with itself never mind the
party it relies on for its survival – is no
recipe for the clear and strong leadership
needed.
While the party in government is
tearing itself apart, HM’s loyal Opposition
is equally divided, even if it is better at
hiding that fact as it smells blood in the
water. Post-election talk of a cross-party
commission to oversee the Brexit process,
and build a broad consensus at a time of
deep division, has foundered on the rock
of partisan political ambition.
The Brextremists and Remoaners
have developed into opposing cults,
lambasting those that do not support
their one true belief. Following the soap
opera of Priti Patel’s resignation, the
main qualification for her replacement
appeared to be which cult they were a
disciple of, demonstrating once again the
ability of Brexit to suffocate the broader
agenda of government.
Amid all of this chaos, the civil service
has been getting on with its job, working
quickly to establish two new departments
and coordinating people and policy in
a way many had assumed it was not
capable of.
Contrary to populist belief, civil
servants have relished the challenge,
regardless of their own political
preference, because that is what being a
civil servant is all about. Underpaid and
under-resourced, they continue to work
tirelessly to deliver the best possible
outcome for the UK.
Maybe we shouldn’t expect those who
cannot conceive of that kind of non-tribal
commitment to understand. Their world
is dominated by trenches from where they
lob their cynical, vindictive insults blindly
at any perceived enemy. Trench warfare is
not about making progress, it’s not about
finding solutions – it’s warfare for the
sake of it.
So, whilst insults are hurled and
individuals who are unable to respond
are publicly vilified, civil servants will be
concentrating on trying to solve the latest
crisis created by the country’s political
leadership. Because that’s what being a
civil servant is all about.
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 15
 Opinion
Interview

Skills, thrills
and Brexit
headaches When Rupert McNeil left the private sector to
lead civil service HR two years ago, he hadn’t
banked on Brexit. But he’s determined that
it won’t halt progress on skills, performance
management, industrial relations and
diversity. Matt Ross meets him.

16 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018


“V
ictory!” he
cries. And
Rupert
McNeil, the
civil service’s
Chief People
Officer, clenches his fist in celebration.
When I last interviewed McNeil in
June 2016, he made clear his hostility to
the civil service’s ‘forced distribution’
performance management system –
under which managers had to put 10%
of their staff into the ‘must improve’ box.
Criticising performance management
that focuses “too much attention on
the process and the mechanics, and
not enough on the critically-important
human interaction,” he argued against
annual reporting and identified a “strong
appetite at every level” for reform.
Eighteen months on, that system has
been swept away. McNeil is careful not
to claim credit for the change: “It was a
privilege to watch that decision being
taken by the leadership of the civil
service,” he says now. “The meeting
where it was decided was as good an
example as I’ve seen, in any context, of
a thorough discussion of a strategically
important issue.” But he did play an
important role, and got closely involved
in the Valuation Office Agency’s pilot of
its replacement system.
The VOA’s quarterly moderation
meetings were, he says, “very rational,
clinical but very compassionate
discussions about individuals. I thought:
this is what we want.” And under its
new approach, he points out, about
8% of staff fall into the “‘must improve’
equivalent.” The requirement to identify
10% as failing, he comments, led to
enormous amounts of “energy being
expended, when actually you could trust
the system to come up with 8%.”
The next decision, he adds, is whether
to expand the new system to the Senior
Civil Service (SCS): “That discussion
hasn’t happened yet, but it doesn’t take
a lot to see what my views would be on
that.”
These reforms represent a significant
change to the way civil servants are
managed. But McNeil is also taking a
more active role than his predecessors
in addressing some of the big policy
challenges facing the civil service – and
the biggest of all, of course, is Brexit.
As chair of the European Capability
and Capacity Board, created to
Rupert McNeil: the making
of Whitehall’s HR chief
1988 Completes one-year internship
in the office of US Senator Paul Simon
(Democrat, Illinois)
1989 Graduates from St Catherine’s
College, Oxford, with BA in Politics
and Philosophy
1994 After five years working on pay
and employment markets for the CBI,
joins management consultancy firm
Arthur Andersen
2002 Joins Deloitte as a partner
working on executive compensation
2005 Moves to Barclays bank as HR
group executive director, becoming
HR director for global retail and
commercial banking two years later
2010 Appointed HR director of Aviva
UK
2012 Moves to Lloyds Banking Group
as group HR director
2016 Joins Cabinet Office as civil
service Chief People Officer
build relevant skills in government,
McNeil helped staff up the two Brexit
departments and the Cabinet Office team.
And reshaping government around the
unprecedented challenges of Brexit has,
he says, provided “a really fantastic
pretext to put into practice some things
which we wanted to do as part of the
workforce plan”.
In particular, he’s taken the
opportunity to improve the civil service’s
approach to recruiting and deploying
talent across government. The Fast
Stream was a crucial source of staff for
DEXEU and DIT, he explains, and about
500 jobs went to Fast Stream applicants
who’d scored well in testing but not quite
made it into the programme.
Meanwhile, McNeil is in talks with
Interview
the policy profession to create pools of
policy specialists who can be deployed
across government to address emerging
challenges. “We’re building on ‘surge’
techniques that have been used in the
operational area,” he says, “setting up
what we’re calling a ‘policy reserve’.”
Effective management of Brexit
issues demands collaboration across
departmental boundaries. And here,
McNeil argues that the civil service is
starting from a good place: “The culture
is actually very naturally collaborative
– although it may not always appear
like that to people when they’re in it!”
he says, smiling. It’s also, he says, good
at learning rapidly how to deal with
new challenges. But he does identify
one important weak spot: “Sometimes
the problem isn’t one of intellect or of
challenge; it’s about whether the right
technical skills are in the room.”
McNeil – himself a technical specialist,
recruited from outside government after a
career in HR – believes that “the job of the
professional – the HR, the commercial,
the policy professional – is to protect
amateurs from the counter-intuitive.”
In other words, solutions that sound
like common sense to the generalist can
produce bad outcomes when applied
in the complex worlds of specialist and
technical delivery.
“If you look at the West Coast Mainline,
the right technical skills weren’t there;
you could argue that’s also true of what
Chilcot found,” he argues. “We need to
teach people to know what they don’t
know, so they can bring in the right
skills.”
Indeed, skills seem to dominate
McNeil’s in-tray. He proudly reports
that all online Civil Service Learning
courses are to be provided without
charge, removing “a source of friction
that was deterring people”. And he says
officials will soon have access to a “line
management fundamentals package,
accompanied by a self-assessment tool”.
Meanwhile, the civil service
professions are becoming more involved
in training; this, he says, is a “really
fantastic thing that’s happened over
the last 12 months”. And as well as
developing their own specialist skills,
McNeil adds, civil servants “need to be
able to manage people with different
technical backgrounds from theirs –
whether it’s me coming in and having to
work with policy people or parliamentary
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 17
 Interview
counsel for the first time, or vice versa.”
So one of the new Civil Service
Leadership Academy’s three learning
strands, he explains, will examine “how
you lead in a multi-disciplinary context”.
The academy has already run training
in parliamentary procedures, and other
professions such as commercial and
digital are developing courses: “It’s the
job of a profession to say what it thinks
other people need to know about that
profession,” he adds.
A second strand, Basecamp, helps new
SCS staff to become “good organisational
leaders”. The programme runs for a year,
and is being rolled out for directors and
director-generals. And the third strand
involves dissecting case studies of civil
service delivery.
Here, explains McNeil, programme
leaders haven’t been afraid to examine
the civil service’s failures as well as its
successes – with West Coast Mainline
and Chilcot on the agenda as well as
the Scottish fiscal framework and the
response to Ebola. The first two, he says,
“go in the ‘blunders of our government’
category,” with the Iraq course “building
on work that’s been done with the
Ministry of Defence on lessons from
Chilcot, particularly on challenge.”
That seems particularly appropriate
now, I suggest – for Brexit has both
sharpened the need for civil servants
to speak truth to power, and fostered
public attacks on officials suspected of
questioning the Brexit project. Will the
Academy give civil servants the skills
and confidence to offer appropriate
challenge? “I think, in a sense that’s the
most important thing that gets delivered
through this,” he replies. “And I think
it’s also what makes very senior people
– permanent secretaries – want to be
involved and to share their thinking.”
As the civil service develops its
specialist professional skills, it will
have to pay just as much attention to
retaining them – for, as McNeil’s own
career demonstrates, many of these skills
are valued in both the public and private
sectors. Yet many civil service packages
are no longer competitive, and the Budget
crushed hopes that the Whitehall pay cap
might be relaxed.
Quite a lot can be achieved without
lifting the pay cap, McNeil believes.
“We’ve got tools that we didn’t
have before, particularly with the
professions,” he notes, pointing to the
18 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
digital functions’ establishment of a
cross-government system of job families
and capability levels. Below SCS levels,
this enables departments to improve pay
parity across the civil service by adjusting
allowances. In this case, he adds, the
changes are being funded by replacing
expensive contractors (see Truth to
Power, p30) with permanent staff.
“That type of intelligent thinking about
interdepartmental comparisons and
how you structure pay needs to happen
across all the professions,” says McNeil.
“And it becomes particularly important
with hubs, where you’ve got people from
different departments sitting alongside
each other doing similar jobs.”
This approach is harder with SCS jobs,
he accepts – but here, the challenges are
The current SCS
arrangements
encourage people to
move too rapidly
also different. “The problem is that the
current arrangements encourage people
to move too rapidly,” he argues. “We
want to look at ways in which people can
be recognised in pay terms for staying in
one role and acquiring more skills.” This
goal will feed into his response to the
Senior Salaries Review Board, which has
“been very good and challenging of us,
saying: ‘What does the SCS of the future
look like? What are you trying to hit in
terms of your approach to pay?’”
These sensitive pay issues are, McNeil
acknowledges, much more easily
addressed within a functioning industrial
relations framework – and he agrees
the current arrangements aren’t up to
scratch. His new Executive Director for
Employee Relations, Mervyn Thomas,
has been tasked with “building the
architecture for really effective industrial
relations, because somewhere along the
line we’ve lost that a bit – and with it, lost
a really effective set of channels.”
The civil service collaborated
effectively with the unions on pensions,
he argues, recruiting them onto a Pension
Scheme Advisory Board. “That’s working
really well as a technical advisory group,”
he says. “Imagine that happening on
estates and locations; training; diversity
and equality; pay and productivity. These
are all conversations we should be having
with union partners.”
It certainly helped in refashioning
performance management, he adds: “We
had really, really good conversations with
the unions, and that’s made the product
much better.”
Besides performance management,
there’s one other topic that McNeil
plainly feels truly passionate about:
diversity. “There are lots of things I want
to do whilst I’m privileged to be doing this
role, but I will be very disappointed if we
haven’t moved on two things by 2020,”
he says. “One is to make a real dent in the
representation of [minority] groups. And
the other is being able to say that we are
the UK’s most inclusive employer. I feel
that accountability very strongly.”
The Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion
Strategy, published in October, promises
targets for the representation of ethnic
minority and disabled staff within the
SCS by 2020. Departmental goals, McNeil
explains, will be published by next
April and incorporated into permanent
secretaries’ performance objectives.
To create the system change required
for departments to hit those targets, a
task force has been established – chaired
by civil service Chief Executive John
Manzoni, and supported by a dedicated
team. “We’ve seen real traction on
disability and workplace adjustment by
taking that approach, and we’re going
to be looking forensically at how we can
support individuals into the SCS,” he
says. “We want to demonstrate to the best
ethnic minority talent in the UK that the
civil service is the place to work.”
On this topic, McNeil’s passion is clear.
And now that performance management
has been reformed, he’s bringing the
big guns to bear on the civil service’s
rejuvenated diversity agenda. For a
shift this complex and wide-ranging,
ambitious diversity targets would present
a tight deadline. But whatever goals are
set, I, for one, wouldn’t bet against him
crying “Victory!” on diversity in 2020.
 NorthernOpinion
Ireland

Northern Ireland has been without a government for almost

a year. But, while politicians try to clear a path back to
power-sharing, the demands on public services don’t go
away. Matt Foster speaks to three FDA members who are
senior officials in the Northern Ireland Civil Service about
how they’re keeping the show on the road.

The show
must go on
N
ick Perry has led seen anything quite like it. “It’s the first
Northern Ireland’s time, not only in the ten years or so since
Department of Justice devolution, but really in my 36 years in
(DoJ) since it was set the civil service, where we’ve been in
up in 2010 – so this a position of having no direct political
experienced public authority.”
servant has certainly been around For almost a year now, there has been
the block. But, as the unprecedented no functioning executive in Northern
political impasse at Stormont continues, Ireland. A bitter row over the handling
the DoJ’s Permanent Secretary tells of the region’s controversial Renewable
Public Service Magazine that he’s never Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme led to

Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 19

 Northern Ireland
a collapse in the power-sharing deal
between the assembly’s two largest
parties – Sinn Féin and the Democratic
Unionist Party – back in January 2017.
Despite fresh elections to the Stormont
Assembly in March, and an intensive
round of talks aimed at finding common
ground, that deadlock continues, while a
major inquiry into the RHI scheme itself
is now underway.
If that wasn’t enough, the Northern
Ireland Civil Service (NICS) must also,
in the absence of ministers, get to
grips with the manifold complexities
of preparing for the UK’s exit from the
European Union, a decision with major
implications for the region – not least
because of its geographical proximity to
another EU member state.
As well as this hefty policy workload,
the 23,000 officials in the Northern
Ireland Civil Service (NICS) must keep the
region’s public services running as they
await the return of ministers – to ensure,
as far as possible, that it’s business as
usual in Northern Ireland.
Claire Archbold, the interim head
of Northern Ireland’s Departmental
Solicitor’s Office (DSO), tells PSM that
managing what remains “a very young
set of institutions” in the region means
that adaptability in complex times is very
much in the NICS’s blood. “Everything
is uncharted territory. I think one of the
skills that the Northern Ireland Civil
Service has, in my experience, is of
being able to step up to the mark and
continue to deliver – no matter what the
circumstances.”
With no ministers to direct them,
senior officials across the NICS have
to use their judgement to try to ensure
continuity. The 2016-2021 Draft
Programme for Government, drawn up
before the administration fell, has given
them a sense of direction, while Archbold
and her colleagues have been on hand to
help departments navigate some of the
tricky constitutional questions thrown
up by the current situation. “In a sense
our role hasn’t really changed, because
we’re there to provide legal counsel
and support to departments as well as
ministers,” she explains.
Archbold acknowledges that the DSO
has been “very, very busy” of late, not
just with providing that ongoing support
to departments, but also advising them
on the legal implications of their Brexit-
focused projects – “a really big, chunky
20 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
We decided to
spend money we
didn’t have at the time
– you have to take
proportionate action
Peter May
area of work” – and on their participation
in the RHI inquiry. Meanwhile, she says,
the day-to-day business of running a
major public sector organisation has to
continue. Indeed, on the day PSM spoke
to Archbold, the Government Legal
Service has just published an extensive
review of legal grading to make sure the
support DSO provides is “absolutely
optimum for whenever the institutions
are fully up and running again”.
In some areas, pressing ahead with
the previous administration’s priorities
has proven relatively straightforward,
as Peter May, the Permanent Secretary
at the Department for Infrastructure
(DfI), explains. “The starting point is that
we look at what the outgoing executive
and our outgoing minister had set us as
policy directions, and we try to continue
to implement those,” he tells PSM. May,
whose organisation’s broad remit covers
everything from roads and rail to major
planning applications, points out that
the “long-term game” of managing big
infrastructure projects has been to his
department’s advantage at a time of
political uncertainty.
“Prior to the executive falling, they had
identified four ‘flagship projects’ which
our department was responsible for.
The importance of having those flagship
projects is that it guarantees multi-
annual funding for the programme.
We’ve been working on a succession
of one-year budgets, which creates
challenges. If we know that, in principle,
come what may, these projects will be
prioritised, that allows us to get on and
go after them even in the absence of
ministers. There’s a clear direction of
travel.”
DoJ’s Nick Perry says his department
has been fortunate in having had two
previous ministers – David Ford and
Claire Sugden – who set out clear
justice policy priorities before leaving
post. He also points out that large parts
of the justice system benefit from a
degree of separation from politics that
allows them to continue to run without
ministers. “One of the features of the
justice system, as opposed to some
other parts of government, is we have
major constitutionally independent
players which continue to perform their
functions,” he says. “The chief constable,
the Lord Chief Justice, the Director of
Public Prosecutions, and to an extent,
prisons and the Youth Justice Agency
carry out their statutory functions in a
normal way.”
In other areas, the ongoing lack of
political direction has required officials
to make some tough calls. At the end
of August 2017, for example, the north-
west of Northern Ireland was hit by
major flooding, leaving bridges, roads
and flood defences badly damaged as
nearly two-thirds of the average rainfall
for August poured down in just nine
hours.
“We took the decision here that we
needed to start to spend money that we
didn’t have at that time to try and repair
those roads, bridges and flood defences,
and then to put the necessary budget in
place with support from colleagues in
the Department of Finance thereafter,”
the says DfI chief Peter May. “Normally
resource allocation would be something
that ministers would very much take
the lead on in our system. But when
you’re faced with circumstances that are
unforeseeable, I think you have to take
proportionate action.”
May is clear that, had any minister
been in post during the floods, they

Everything is
uncharted
territory – the NICS has
the skills to step up to
the mark
Claire Archbold
“would have wanted to fix that damage
immediately – that’s the basis on
which I took our decisions here”.
But he acknowledges that he and his
colleagues are now in “constitutionally
uncharted territory”, as they make
careful judgements on the kind of matters
that would usually be the job of elected
politicians. “All of our careers are spent
preparing and supporting ministers in
their activity,” he says. “So to go without
ministers for this period is really very
strange indeed, and it gives rise to all
sorts of challenges.”
Speaking in late 2017, Northern Ireland
Secretary James Brokenshire paid tribute
to the region’s civil servants, saying they
had shown the “utmost professionalism
in protecting and preserving public
services throughout these difficult
times”. The comments came as
Brokenshire took the extraordinary
step of setting a budget for the Northern
Ireland from Westminster, although
he was keen to stress it reflected the
“departmental allocations and ambits
that have been recommended by the
Northern Ireland Civil Service” and did
Northern Ireland
not represent a return to what would be
politically-contentious direct rule from
London.
“Without further action, by the end of
November there are manifest risks that
the NICS would simply begin to run out of
resources,” Brokenshire told MPs. “That
would mean no funding available for
public services, with all of the negative
impacts that would accompany such a
cliff edge. No government could simply
stand by and allow that to happen.”
The move to impose a budget means
that those running Northern Ireland’s
departments can now operate with a
greater degree of financial certainty while
political talks on resolving the impasse
at Stormont continue. But in some cases,
the political vacuum continues to have
consequences: choosing who to appoint
to run key public sector organisations, for
example, is a job for elected politicians; We’re reaching
without them, some key organisations
are now being led by interims. the point where
In the DoJ’s area of work, meanwhile, strategic decisions
the Policing Board – which scrutinises
the work of the Northern Ireland Police have to made – people
Service – requires political members to must be able to plan
function and so cannot operate without
the Executive and Assembly in place. Nick Perry
Permanent secretary Nick Perry is
clear-eyed about the challenges that
the continued suspension of power- wider civil service, and also in the police,
sharing is likely to present to the NICS. the judiciary and elsewhere. And so it’s a
“It’s not a matter of either willingness pleasure to come to work; it’s a privilege
or competence. It is a matter of the to come to work, really.”
authority and legitimacy to take strategic May tells PSM he has received “a lot
decisions and set budgets for next year of support from colleagues within the
and succeeding years. We’re reaching the department, from my peers and from
point where those sorts of decisions are the head of the Northern Ireland Civil
going to have to be made because people Service, David Sterling”. He adds: “You
have to be able to plan.” know, there’s a strong public service
It remains to be seen how the crisis in spirit that sustains us all through
Northern Ireland’s politics will unfold this.” For Claire Archbold at the DSO,
and, while the immediate focus is on meanwhile, the last few months have
restoring power-sharing, it’s clear that provided a sharp reminder of just why,
the return of an Executive will not magic amid the intense focus on Northern
away the major challenges facing the Ireland’s “high politics”, her colleagues’
NICS in the years ahead – whether that’s commitment to their work is so important
Brexit, the RHI inquiry or the continued for the region.
drive to deliver high quality public “A lot of us in Northern Ireland, when
services in an era of tightly constrained we were thinking about where we were
resources. going to have our career, had the choice
But, whatever 2018 holds for the to go to England or somewhere else,” she
service, all three leaders we spoke to are says. “And we didn’t – we stayed. For a
clear that their organisations stand ready lot of people, I think that’s because we
to serve. “The people I have the good wanted to be part of the solution in this
fortune to work with are really committed place. For me, that’s what the business
and professional,” says Perry. “That’s the of government is about – continuing to
same both within this department, in the deliver public services for people here.”
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 21
 Opinion
Relocation
Location, relocation
and dislocation
The creation of government hubs will trigger the biggest
civil service office moves since the Second World War –
demanding skilful management, honest communications
and serious investment in training and technology.
Tommy Newell reports.
T
he government hubs
programme is well and
truly underway, with
the first ‘hub’, located
in Croydon, opening its
doors this past summer.
The government’s ambitious estates
strategy aims to shrink the number
of government buildings from 800
to 200 by 2023, consolidating the
workforce into large shared buildings
or campuses across the UK, which will
eventually house multiple government
departments.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is
currently leading this process and will
see its 170 regional offices consolidated
into 13 hubs by 2021. At the time of
writing, leases had already been signed
for hubs in Croydon, Belfast, Edinburgh,
Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol,
Newcastle and Cardiff, with deals
for offices in Glasgow, Nottingham,
Manchester and Stratford in East London
yet to be finalised.
Speaking candidly to the Public
Accounts Committee on 6 November,
HMRC Permanent Secretary Jon
Thompson acknowledged that HMRC
needs to do “further work with
staff to recognise the benefits of the
regionalisation programme”.
For Jeremy Carr-Smith, founder of
Help Moving Office, a specialist online
22 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
resource for office relocation planning,
good communication is “absolutely
critical” to any successful office move,
no matter how large or small. He claims
this is especially true for the government
hubs programme, as “it’s out there in the
public domain”.
Carr-Smith believes that people
are often more concerned about
“the prospect of change rather than
the reality of change” and the best
way to overcome this is to regularly
communicate with consistent, positive
messages. He also stresses that this
should be done at every managerial
level, not just from the top down.
This view is echoed by Kevin White,
former Director General of HR in the
Home Office, who says: “Any programme
of change is going to be more effective if
the people who are being changed feel
they understand it and, even if they may
not like it, feel like they have a chance to
express their views.”
According to White, managers often
underestimate the extent to which
they need to keep communicating with
people on difficult change projects.
“I think it’s quite helpful to have a
reminder that regular and engaged
communication is really important,
particularly if you’re dealing with
uncertainties,” he says. “It can’t just
be put down on paper and sent out; it
 Relocation
Opinion

actually needs to be delivered through
leaders talking, managers talking to
staff, listening to staff and helping them
to learn in a process of discussion rather
than through reading bulletins.”
But White admits that there are
sometimes limits to how open managers
can be. “You can’t always give people the
information they would like to have,”
he explains. “Sometimes it’s known but
can’t be presented for commercial or
other sorts of reasons. Sometimes you
don’t know… But that’s not a reason for
not communicating as much as you can.
and telling people what you don’t
know, why you don’t know it and
HMRC's proposed hubs Johnson agrees that open
communication, and a focus on
proactive support and training, is
essential to putting people “at the
heart” of a relocation strategy. However,
the inevitable fall-out from any big
programme is that some people will not
be able to move to the new locations.
HMRC’s office moves alone will affect
38,000 of its 58,600 staff, resulting in
5,000 redundancies, and Johnson is
GLASGOW EDINBURGH concerned that the department has lost
thousands of years of experience in just
one round of office closures.
NEWCASTLE ARC has worked tirelessly to win some
concessions to ensure members get the
BELFAST

when you’re likely to know.” support they need to relocate – such as

One of the key benefits of the hubs more freedom to work from home where
programme to government is, of course, LIVERPOOL
LEEDS possible and changes to the method
saving money. But civil service Chief MANCHESTER of calculating Daily Travel Assistance
Executive John Manzoni has emphasised (DTA). However, this allowance is
that the programme must also provide taxable and will only last for three years
NOTTINGHAM

benefits for workers, and allow the civil
service to take advantage of advances in
technology to allow greater collaboration
and give civil servants “more power over
how and when they work” – something
he has described as an “integral part” of
the strategy.
The Association of Revenue and
Customs (ARC), the FDA section
representing senior HMRC staff, has for
the last two years been actively involved
in supporting members who will be
affected.
ARC President Vicky Johnson, who has
some first-hand experience of the new
Croydon hub, says: “The whole thrust
of the regional centres is getting people
away from thinking they’ve got to have
a desk to do the work that they’re doing.
You’re supposed to decide what your
work is that day, and if you need a desk
to do it you need to find one. If you don’t
need a desk then you will be encouraged
to use the other available facilities.
“There are collaboration zones, quiet
zones where there are no phones, and
rooms for telephone calls,” she adds.
“In some places, these changes are not
landing well but they are fundamental to
the success of the relocation strategy.”
The HMRC programme is supposed
to fit in with wider changes in civil
service working practices that focus
on ‘smart working’, and the new hubs
are being built from the ground up
with this in mind. According to Carr-
Smith, “an office move is always a great
trigger for management to incorporate
BIRMINGHAM
CARDIFF
BRISTOL
Office moves can
be a great trigger
for changing working
practices, but have to
be accompanied by
training
change in working practices”, but this
“has to be accompanied with a training
programme”.
“The worst-case scenario is moving
into an office where nothing works,” he
says; but even when new systems are up
and running, if staff aren’t comfortable
with them, this can be “just as bad”. In
order to fully reap the productivity gains
of a new office environment, Carr-Smith
advocates focused training programmes
for even the smallest changes, such as
how to use new audio-visual and phone
equipment. This “induction process”,
as Carr-Smith describes it, should start
well before the move-in date to limit any
further obstructions or delays to people’s
day-to-day work.
for most staff. If the current approach
to civil service pay progression doesn’t
change, Johnson is concerned people
STRATFORD
simply “won’t be able to afford” the
CROYDON
commute when the assistance ends.
If not properly managed, the
escalation of commuting costs and times
could store up retention issues in the
future, but Kevin White believes that
hubs can also work to unlock greater
opportunities for career progression in
the longer term.
“One of the things that’s best for
people in the hubs is that... the more
you bring together organisations, and
the more senior roles, regional roles and
local roles in organisations together, the
more you create a viable career structure
for people who want to make progress
but can’t afford to move,” he argues.
But White suggests this will be much
harder to achieve without increased
transparency and common terms and
conditions across departments.
“You need to look at each of these
hubs as a common employment area
and do what you ought to be doing in
order to give people opportunities to
move around it,” he says. “One of the
things that will make that easier to
manage is reducing differences in terms
and conditions and pay… the people
leading these hubs should take whatever
opportunities they can to reduce the
divergence.”
Tommy Newell is FDA Communciations
Officer and a staff writer for PSM.

Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 23

 Resilience
“T
hings fall apart;
the centre
cannot hold”.
Many readers
will be familiar
with this line
from W B Yeats’s poem Second Coming,
which hints at possible anarchy followed
by seismic change in the world. In this
era of Donald Trump, tension with
North Korea and uncertainty over what
a post-Brexit UK will be like, it can feel
as though things really are falling apart.
From a Whitehall perspective, there are
few signs of an end to austerity, and the
political situation is unstable. So how
are our public institutions faring and –
more importantly – how are our public
servants holding up under the strain?
Frontline public services in the UK are
creaking under the strain of increasing
demand and fewer resources – a
situation archly depicted by the ‘More
of Less’ strategy imposed on hapless
managers in the BBC mockumentary
W1A. There are daily media reports of
prison staff, police officers, firefighters
and paramedics finding that they
cannot cope with the pressures and
expectations of the job. It is easy to see
24 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
Civil servants are under
more pressure than ever
before, and stresses and
strains at home can make
thing worse. Jo Clift urges
managers to pay attention
to their own mental health
– and that of their teams.
why a doctor or nurse might be suffering
from work-related stress, and it is surely
a sign of progress that firefighters and
NHS staff feel they can talk about the
difficulties they face – but what about
the people who work directly for the
government?
My observation is that Whitehall civil
servants are under increasing strain
– partly because of the challenges of
the job, but also because many civil
servants find it hard to be open about
the pressures they are experiencing,
especially if those pressures originate at
home.
My professional life was interrupted
by an injury followed by illness, and
part of the stress of the situation came
from the responsibility I felt to return to
work as soon as possible. One evening
on the train home from work I had found
myself texting a work colleague with
blood-stained fingers. The text read:
‘I don’t think I will be able to make the
meeting with the SpAd tomorrow… will
keep you posted’. The blood was from
a head injury I had just sustained; I
was still shaking and feeling faint from
being knocked over by a cyclist whilst
crossing the road near St Paul’s, but had
somehow managed to get myself via
taxi to Liverpool Street station. Once I
reached Walthamstow, my husband took
me to A&E, where the staff were shocked
that I had been using public transport in
my condition.
I didn’t make the meeting the
following day; in fact, it was a year
before I was fully recovered and back at
work full-time. I was suffering from post-
concussion syndrome, which causes
debilitating fatigue and a lack of mental
energy. After four months, I started
working a few hours a week, and built up
my hours gradually.

I found my own journey back to health
and work tough because I sometimes felt
I had lost my confidence. The experience
made me more aware of how closely
our emotional wellbeing at work and at
home are intertwined. As I shared my
story with others, I started to see how
many colleagues were balancing difficult
challenges at home and at work. Of
course, this is not news for any parent.
But just within my own team I had
people who were caring for parents with
long-term illnesses, parents of children
with special needs, people who had been
bereaved, and colleagues going through
difficult divorces. Many of us like to think
of ourselves as resilient, but dealing
with continuous pressure at home and at
work can be intolerable.
Since the EU referendum, many
departments have seen a significant
increase in workload. I hear Whitehall
leaders expressing concern about the
enormous strain that they and their
teams are under. I know civil service
managers who feel close to breaking
point because it is impossible to manage
the workload within the timescales and
expectations set by ministers.
A recent survey by MIND found that
15% of public sector workers said their
mental health was poor, compared
with 9% in the private sector. And in a
worrying trend towards presenteeism,
Civil Service World has reported that civil
servants who were unwell were tending
to take holiday rather than sick leave, or
just carrying on working regardless.
Does the culture in Whitehall allow
individuals to get support when they feel
they cannot cope? Are managers just
paying lip service to the problem when,
in reality, most people still feel they need
to put on a brave face and show willing,
rather than putting their own health
first?
In the last year, more and more people
in the public eye have been willing
to be open about their own mental
health problems. One of the first within
Westminster was the deputy editor of the
Spectator, Isabel Hardman, who chose to
share her struggle to recover her mental
health, rather than hide away.
This is all to the good. Whitehall
leaders from the Cabinet Secretary
downwards have been encouraging all
civil servants – particularly those in
leadership positions – to discuss stress,
pressure and mental health issues.
Jo Clift’s tips for staying resilient and
coping with workplace pressures
1) Being under pressure
is the ‘new normal’.
Tackle stress head on, rather than
pretending you can cope.
2) Everyone has their
own stress barometer.
Knowing where your ‘tipping point’
will help you to choose roles that suit
you and in which you can be most
productive.
3) You are not alone.
Sharing what you are dealing with is
a fantastic way to help you cope and
creates a support network too.
4) Be up front with your
teams and managers.
It will give your team permission to be
up front with you, and your manager
and employer the information they
need to meet their duty of care towards
you.
Again, this is a welcome development,
although it seems to have been prompted
by the rather selfish concern that if staff
are not supported, they are likely to burn
out or leave, making it even harder to
deliver Brexit and the other business of
government.
However, I have also heard from
civil servants that they are spending so
much time on engagement activities –
including ‘wellbeing’ responsibilities
– that their ability to do their ‘day job’
is suffering. It is important that the
wellbeing agenda does not become yet
another pressure that puts civil servants
under even more strain.
We cannot take our own mental
health, or that of our colleagues, for
granted. No one would expect us to
come to work with a broken back; we
would be expected to ‘convalesce’ (a
word, incidentally, that seems to be
disappearing from our vocabulary). We
all know that mental health is the poor
relation within NHS, but we are often
guilty of treating it as a second-order
issue in the office too.
How many of your team would feel
that they could spontaneously work from
home for a day, and be honest that they
Resilience
5) Beware of diversionary
activities.
Food, alcohol, social media, TV or even
sleep may blot things out for a few
weeks or months, but won’t help you
tackle the underlying challenges.
6) Talk to your GP.
My GP was fantastically supportive
and made a big difference, particularly
when I was panicking about not
recovering fast enough.
7) Develop your own
resilience toolkit.
Unique to each person, these
generally include you have a balance
between work and home life, time
for things you enjoy, and tools for de-
stressing.
Read more advice from Jo Clift
at www.jocliftconsulting.com
were doing it for emotional or mental
health reasons?
How many of your team have taken
annual leave when they were feeling
unwell, or had a medical appointment
they felt they couldn’t be open about?
As a manager, are you open with your
team about the pressures that you are
facing yourself, and are you sharing your
strategies for dealing with them?
If the answer to any of those questions
is ‘no’ or ‘don’t know’, then you may be
finding it hard to negotiate the pressures
of the office yourself, and you will
inevitably struggle to look after others. It
may be that this reflects the culture in the
wider department that you work in.
So to return to Yeats, can the centre
hold? Or will things fall apart? It seems
to me that the truth lies somewhere in
the middle. Government will continue
to function, and probably function
pretty well. But the question is how
much individual civil servants will have
suffered in the process.
Jo Clift is a former senior civil servant who
now works as an independent consultant
and trainer in personal resilience.
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 25
 Books
Our look at the latest books on work, politics and public service
Adults in the room: my
battle with Europe’s deep
establishment
By Yanis Varoufakis
The Bodley Head, 485pp, £20
Until Brexit, the biggest
single shock experienced
by the EU was the Greek
financial crisis, and at its
heart lay fraught, time-
pressed negotiations
between EU officials and a member
state. You’d have thought the UK might
have lessons to learn from the Greek
experience.
Yet nobody here makes much noise
about it – and this book by Yanis
Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance
minister, reveals why. For in his story of
how the EU killed Greece to save itself,
the union has an ugly look – and its
negotiating partner an even uglier fate.
An academic economist, Varoufakis
began challenging the handling of
Greece’s financial crisis in 2010. By
dispensing bail-out cash tied to austerity
policies, the ‘troika’ – the European
Commission, European Central Bank and
IMF – were treating the Greek problem
as a liquidity issue. But Varoufakis saw
the state as bankrupt: with GDP down
by nearly 20%, it simply couldn’t pay its
way. In his view, imposing tax rises and
spending cuts was rendering its swelling
debts ever more insoluble, and locking
its people into a “Dickensian debtors’
prison”.
The troika, Varoufakis argues, was also
being fundamentally dishonest about
its goals. German and French banks had
lent heavily to southern Europe and faced
huge losses, but the ECB was barred
from buying up bad debts. So, instead
it gave Greece a €110bn bail-out, then
channelled the money straight back to
the banks. The troika didn’t actually want
their loans repaid; their only goal was to
prevent a Greek default or restructuring
26 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
In this story about how
the EU killed Greece to
save itself, the union has an
ugly look – and Greece an even
uglier fate
that could have triggered capital flight
from the other southern economies –
threatening German and French banks
and, ultimately, the euro itself.
When Varoufakis became finance
minister in the radical Syriza government
in January 2015, he tried to convince
the troika that Greece would prefer a
painful exit from the Eurozone to endless
austerity within it; if they believed that,
he hoped, they’d accept his plan for debt
restructuring, economic stimulus and a
clampdown on tax evasion. As leverage,
he threatened a “haircut” on ECB bonds
and, to make his position credible, made
preparations for a new drachma. But the
troika, wholly focused on preventing
contagion, played hardball.
While undermining Varoufakis within
the finance ministry, the troika began
gradually closing down Greece’s banks.
Varoufakis recounts in detail how his
plan was slowly derailed and eventually
killed when Greek PM Alexis Tsipras was
drawn into direct but dead-end talks with
Angela Merkel, culminating in a new bail-
out and yet more austerity. Today, Greek
national debt is over 180% of GDP and
unemployment 22%, whilst household
disposable income and public spending
continue to fall.
This is not a comfortable read for
EU fans. But Greece’s brutal treatment
illustrates what happens when a member
state threatens a central pillar of the EU
project – and the Single Market is more
central even than the euro. The EU’s
leaders will sacrifice anything – bail-out
cash, the Greeks or UK trade – to preserve
the EU’s integrity.
Negotiating with the EU on issues that
threaten its integrity from a position of
weakness is, in Varoufakis’s experience,
not a good plan. And he’s clear that the
one thing more difficult than securing
EU reform from the inside, is getting a
good deal from the outside. In the end,
he concludes, a “policy of constructive
disobedience within the EU, of being
both in and against this illiberal and anti-
democratic Europe, is the only practical
alternative to the dystopia unfolding as
Europe disintegrates.”
Reviewed by Matt Ross

My Life, Our Times
by Gordon Brown
The Bodley Head, 500pp, £25
As Churchill said of Russia,
Gordon Brown became
“a riddle wrapped in a
mystery inside an enigma”: a
cerebral politician obsessed
with political calculation
and media manipulation; a big ideas
man who got bogged down in minutiae
and squabbling; someone who fought
ferociously for so long to get the top
job, but then didn’t seem to know what
he wanted to do with it. Although
admirable in many ways, these memoirs
don’t provide the key to the conundrum.
As you’d expect, Brown is very good
on the Treasury, and his explanations
of how he rolled back the obsessive
neo-liberalism of the Thatcher/Major
years and intervened decisively to
rescue the British economy during the
banking crisis – avoiding “a second
Great Depression”, as he puts it – are
Off the shelf Other recent reads
When they go low, we go high:
speeches that shaped the world
– and why we need them
by Philip Collins
Harper Collins, 432pp, £16.99
In this dissection of “25 of
the most notable speeches in
history”, Philip Collins makes
a compelling argument that
“rhetoric and democracy
run together”. After all, from
Pericles’s Funeral Oration to Barack
Obama’s second-term victory address,
the speech has been the one constant in
politics over the last 2,500 years.
Collins argues that speeches can be
a force for good and a tool for progress,
as well as dangerous in the hands of
demagogic leaders like Hitler. Collins
may inevitably fall short of his ambition
to restore to politics the “respect,
veneration and hope first expressed by
Pericles”, but drawing on his experience
as Tony Blair’s speech writer, he offers
an interesting insight into how the
persistent power of language has
shaped the history of democracy.
lucid, compelling and surprisingly easy
to follow. And despite insisting that he
doesn’t do “touchy-freely” stuff, Brown
writes very movingly about the death of
his 10-day-old daughter Jennifer in 2002,
describing how, among other things,
he couldn’t listen to music for a year
afterwards.
But he never really tackles the
elephant-shaped question in the room:
frankly, why did he screw up? The
answer, if there is one, falls out of the
pages inadvertently – Brown’s lack of
self-awareness and his reluctance to face
up to personal and political failures.
Just one example. Brown complains
Brown fought so
ferociously to get the top
job, but then didn’t seem to
know what to do with it
Exceeding My Brief:
Memoirs of a Disobedient
Civil Servant
by Barbara Hosking
Biteback, 306pp, £25
Civil servants tend to keep
their cards close to their
chests in their memoirs
– but not 91-year-old
Barbara Hosking. As she
charts a career that took
her to top PR jobs in the heart of Harold
Wilson and Ted Heath’s Downing
Street, Hosking’s is a warm, witty voice
offering a “worm’s eye view” of a crucial
time in Britain’s history, warts and all.
Whether she’s covering up Heath’s
face on a foreign trip with a hat that’s
too big, recalling the “uproar among
the mandarins” when The Times had
the audacity to appoint a dedicated
Whitehall correspondent, or accidentally
booking a bunch of thirsty lobby
journalists into a temperance hotel,
these memoirs give the sense of a life
well-lived and packed full of surprises.
Books
repeatedly about the 24/7 news cycle
forcing politicians to work at a speed
that “almost defies belief”. He has
a point, but he knew all about that
when he took the job. So why did he
still choose to work in an open-plan
office surrounded by TV screens and
Twittering aides, desperately trying to
micromanage events? Tellingly, David
Cameron saw no need to replicate
Brown’s frenetic working arrangements.
Brown writes powerfully about how,
when he came into politics, the big
issue was managing Britain’s decline,
while now it’s Britain’s survival. That
urgency and clarity of thinking sets him
apart from those who have carelessly
tossed much of his legacy away. Brown’s
tragedy is that he had all the right ideas,
but just ended up in the wrong job.
Reviewed by Craig Ryan
Betting the House: The
Inside Story of the 2017
Election
by Tim Ross and Tom McTague
Biteback, 457pp, £14.99
In this meticulously-
researched and pacy book,
political journalists Tim Ross
and Tom McTague chart
how Theresa May went
from being “every bit as
politically invincible as the Iron Lady”
to losing her Parliamentary majority in
such spectacular fashion. With insider
accounts from key figures such as Tory
strategist Lynton Crosby, former May
adviser Nick Timothy and Labour’s
election coordinator Ian Lavery, the pair
deftly avoid being hoodwinked amid
the various scores still being settled.
Instead, they offer an even-handed look
at how the election came about, how
it unfolded, and what the result now
means for a country grappling with
Brexit.
Reviews by Matt Foster and Tommy
Newell.
Public Service Magazine Winter 2018 27
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by Friday 9 March 2018. Put “PSM classifieds” as the subject,
include your membership number and we’ll take care of the rest.
Please remember to rebook your ad for each issue.

Audio version
To receive an audio version of the magazine, For Civil Servants joining in 2017, the Entrance Fee of £392.50 will be waived.
please contact Tommy Newell at Annual Subscription £785
tommy@fda.org.uk or on Contact Membership Secretary Rosemary Tweddle
on 020 7930 9871 or email membership@nlc.org.uk
020 7401 5588. National Liberal Club • Whitehall Place • LONDON • SW1A 2HE

28 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018

Crossword
Tinmen? by
Schadenfreude
Answers to nine clues
lacking definitions
are members of an
unbroken sequence of
twelve.
Solvers must highlight
three normally clued
entries which are
anagrams of the other
three.
Tinmen? by Schadenfreude Win and learn!
There will be a prize of a
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 free FDA Learn/Keyskills
course or workshop, worth
8
around £150, for the first
9 10 correct entry drawn after
the closing date. Find out
more about the courses on
11 12 offer at: www.fda.org.uk/
professionaldevelopment/
13
FDA_Workshops.aspx or
www.wearekeystone.
14 15 16 17
org.uk/keyskills-courses.
Solution in next issue.
18 19 20 21 22

Solution and winner

23
Post Holders by
24 25 26 Schadenfreude
Post Holders by Schadenfreude

1 2 3 4 5 6
T J E M A N M A S E F I E L D
27 7
E D L U E L L D
8 9
B R I D G E S A L A M E D A
28 29 H T I T T M Y
10 11
T R O W E L A N T H I L L
12
R R R M U O E
13 14 15
O M I S S I O N S P A P A W
30 31 W A T T A I
17 18 19 20
S A L V E I N I T I A T E S
21
D V O N S R S
22 23 24
R E D R A W N E S K I M O
Answers to nine clues lacking definitions are members of an unbroken sequence of twelve. 25
O U S I U A U
Solvers must highlight three normally clued entries which are anagrams of the other three. 26
W A F T I N G
27 28
S K I R R E T
N F O I L N C H
ACROSS 2 Twin crystal and old diamonds (7)
O S Y
29
N N E T S E H G U H Y E
30
ACROSS
1 Liberal in the morning not dressed (6) 3 Impulse transmitter never out of order on
1 Liberal in the morning not dressed (6) The perimeter and highlighted entries are the names of the poets laureates from

4 African-American performer roughly sober performer Virginia's mobile (9, 2 words) The perimeter
Southey to Duffy. and highlighted
4 African-American roughly sober and acceptable (7)
and acceptable (7) 9 Alto follows contralto in4erratic
Reckless
baroquedriver
musicalhad moneyless
composition (9) groom worried
entries are the names of the
10 Junior (7, twoordinary
associate member consuming words)large drink (5) poets laureates from Southey
9 Alto follows contralto in erratic baroque
musical composition (9) 11 5 Horse
Acting goddess not so much from
like Peter Pan?the(7)south eating Japanese millet to Duffy.
12 Porter taking part in country(5)
dance (6)
10 Junior associate member consuming ordinary Winner: Debra Carter from
14 Hard border guard (5) 6 Old wind instrument Elizabeth found in
large drink (5)
15 He disregards information about
shedcannibal
(7) (9) the Welsh Government.
11 Acting goddess not so much 18
likeUnlicensed
Peter Pan? pilot maybe7out of hospital overwhelmed
(7) Family mother upsetbyinwife's angry outbursts
Nebraska (4) (8)

12 Porter taking part in country dance (6) 8 Lecturer was out getting drunk (6) How to enter
13 Queen wearing ornate gown preparing an Crossword entries should be
14 Hard border guard (5)
illegal act (10) sent by Friday 23 February
15 He disregards information about cannibal (9)
14 Doctor Who and the end of time (4) 2018 to: Public Service
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17 He does rough calculations at times affected Elizabeth House, 39 York Road,
21 Scattered newts swimming across river (6)
by operational research (9) London SE1 7NQ or by email
24 King nursed by Franciscan nun (6)
19 Former PM almost blunt in favour of keeping (with ‘PSM crossword’ as the
26 Wild sheep shown in high definition (7) united (7) subject) to psm@fda.org.uk
28 Knight east of hilltop (5) 20 French city borders blocked by high Please provide an email address
29 Bones encountered on a sailor's island (9) explosive (6) so we can tell the winner how
30 Black bear runs up the creek (6) 22 Nancy's frivolous pleasure trip covered by to claim their prize.
31 Fattening land girl doesn't finish working (7) editor missing second half (7)
23 Charlie shot about fifty deer (6)
DOWN 25 Storm restricting navy order (5)
1 The Spanish artist capturing very immature 27 Sailor with ego meets baron once a month
creature (5) in Tel Aviv (4)

Public
PublicService
ServiceMagazine
MagazineAutumn
Winter 2018
2017 29
 Truth to Power
Our digital transformation is heading for the rocks
“I joined GDS to help transform government’s approach to
service design. But our approach was flawed – and now
Brexit threatens to undo all our work.”
I
’ve always been motivated by working
in public service and for the benefit of
others, and some years ago I joined the
Government Digital Service (GDS). I’m a
technologist with a background in
programming and engineering digital
services, and I like the principles behind
GDS’s work: it’s on a mission to help
departments build broad-based project
teams, rethink the planning and
management of services, and improve
procurement and delivery.
I advise departments on how to
understand and address the challenges
they’re facing. Our leverage is rooted in
the Treasury’s ‘spend controls’:
departments need our sign-off to commit
cash to digital projects, and we ensure
they’re following GDS standards and
guidelines.
This creates an opportunity to effect
positive change. But in reality, spend
controls form a single gateway shortly
before the department wants to start
spending – so their plans are well
advanced and there’s little time to unpick
them. What’s more, GDS has withdrawn its
own teams from departments, so most
lack the resources or skills – particularly
service design and technical knowledge –
to run delivery in accordance with GDS
principles.
The result has been lots of friction
between GDS and departments. GDS
wants everything to change now, and
we’re holding people up against an ideal.
But we’re doing that through hurdles
rather than support: we mark depart-
ments’ homework without helping them
to get a better grade. In reality,
departments simply cannot meet our
goals in the time available.
Transformation is hard. To really help
departments, we’d need lots of people pro-
viding hands-on support, and a more
collaborative approach – helping them to
build capability, rather than holding a
30 Public Service Magazine Winter 2018
hoop for them to jump through on
individual projects.
Yet progress also demands more
commitment from departments. We
created a ‘transformation support’ team to
help departments strengthen essential
skills and adopt new approaches. But only
a few asked for help, and some requests
appeared to be essentially for presenta-
tional purposes. It seems that many
departments and agencies won’t address
the need to change unless they’re forced
to – but forcing them creates more heat
than light: it’s Catch 22.
GDS has spent seven
years improving service
design and IT procurement
across government, and now
we’re going to stand back as
that progress is undone
Meanwhile, GDS itself has been drifting.
Lots of good people have left, and our new
leaders don’t have the experience or drive
to pursue some of GDS’s goals. And some
GDS interventions have had very mixed
results: our contractor frameworks, for
example, have made it easier to bring in
skills but weakened our ability to hire
permanent staff.
And now we’ve hit Brexit, which
demands a vast amount of transformation
to tight deadlines. As yet, we’re struggling
to define the basics of those changes. In
discussions with departments, it
sometimes seems that ministers are
asking for changes simply to show that
we’re ‘taking back control’.
For us, Brexit creates two big problems:
departments don’t have the time or
resources to deliver essential projects
within GDS guidelines, and retaining our
spend controls gateway would create
impossible bottlenecks. So GDS is
developing plans to pull the teeth of spend
controls, replacing them with audits of
departments’ own project governance. In
exchange, departments will have to apply
GDS principles in all their digital work,
rather than just the big projects.
Softening spend controls will remove
one of the challenges facing departments
as they build the systems demanded by
Brexit. But if you look closely at the new
process, it merely pays lip service to the
pursuit of GDS principles – in reality it’s a
straightforward retreat.
The truth is that departments don’t
have the skills or capacity to address
Brexit-related digital projects in the ways
we’ve been trying to promote. Delivering a
few flagship GDS-compliant services has
taken several years: how could
department run a huge swathe of massive
projects, simultaneously and to short
deadlines, whilst observing GDS
standards? They’re going to have to buy
these solutions from the major IT firms,
and even that will require lots of support
from consultancies.
GDS has spent seven years improving
service design and IT procurement across
government, and now we’re going to
stand back as that progress is undone. For
departments, it’ll be all hands on deck to
deliver projects in any way they can,
holding them together with sticky tape
and string. And in five years, GDS or its
successor will have to address a whole
new set of problems that have become
woven into the fabric of government.
GDS has tried hard to transform
government’s approach to service design.
But I can’t help thinking that we’ve reached
the end of the road – at least for now.
ILLUSTRATION: DAVID SIMONDS
Truth to Power is your chance to tell
politicians and employers how their
policies affect your work and your
organisation. To work with a reporter
on your own story, email us at psm@fda.
org.uk, using a personal email account.
Anonymity is guaranteed.
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